"John Marco - Tyrants and Kings 1 - The Jackal of Nar" - читать интересную книгу автора (Marco John)

"He'll be ready," said Richius with feigned confidence.
"I hope so. We're going to need him if..." Lucyler stopped, his gray eyes
widening. Richius let his own gaze slip back to the birch grove. There, among
the twisted limbs, something stirred. From behind the trees and rocks came a
torrent of crimson. Spots of charcoal with shining eyes dotted the forefront of
the flood.
A knot of terror tied itself in Richius' stomach. "Ignite the cannons!" he
cried. Far down the trench Kally fired up his weapon. The cannon screamed
as it came alive, belching a cloud of spent kerosene into the air. Within
seconds a red funnel of flame poured from its orifice. Next Crodin ignited his
own cannon, trimming its fiery plume into a spear-shaped stream. Other
cannons ignited in the trenches behind them, kerosene pumping into their long
noses and being spit out again as fire. Even in the cold morning, Richius could
feel the heat of the bursts beneath his armor. "Protect the cannons!" Richius
barked. "They're coming!" What had looked at first like a flood of scarlet
water was now plainly a wave of red-robed men breaking toward them.
Wolves were running before the wave. Dozens of them.
"Lorris and Pris," whispered Lucyler. "We are finished." Behind the beasts
came swarms of warriors, each one shouting and brandishing a dual-bladed
jiiktar. Lucyler gritted histeeth and snarled.
"Come then, damned Drol!" he cried, and gave the center of his own jiiktar
a powerful twist. The weapon came apart in his hands, forming two light,
long-bladed swords.
Along the deck the soldiers steeled themselves. There was the snapping of
bowstrings as the air filled with arrows. The missiles landed among the
wolves, puncturing their thick black hides. An arrow caught one of them in the
snout, lodging itself between flaring nostrils. Undeterred, the wolf raced on,
homing for the cannonsтАФjust as Voris had trained it to do.
At once the archers at the trench's left flank focused on the pack. Kally
aimed his cannon, his face streaked with black smudges from the weapon's
backblast.
"More fuel!" he barked.
His lineman twisted the valve on the feed hose. Kally squeezed the trigger.
Red lightning erupted. The bolt blew the wolves backward, their coats torn by
the impact of the fire. An unearthly shriek rose above the bellow of the
cannons. To Richius, the sound was like music.
Dinadin climbed onto the deck and peered out into the distance. His face
was flushed from weeping.
 "Bloody gogs," he spat, fumbling an arrow to his bow.
"No," said Richius. "Not here. I want you near a cannon."
"They're already manned...."
"By a cannon!"
Dinadin grumbled and started off down the deck, squeezing his big body
past the others. In wolf attacks, cannoneers were always the first to fall.
A shout from Lucyler galvanized the deck. The Triin stretched out one of
his swords, pointing at a black mass closing quickly in on them. The wolf with
the arrow in its snout had somehow made it through the cross fire of the
cannons. Little blazes glowed and smoldered in its coat, sending bits of
burning hair drizzling down in its wake.
The beast leapt, a howl tearing from its mouth, its nostrils snorting bloody